Video email is the best of three worlds, bringing together the immediacy of the internet, the precise control and metrics of direct mail, along with the visual appeal of television and YouTube. At its best it has the potential to double or triple the overall efficiency of your marketing program, but employed in the wrong way and it can turn off existing customers. This paper describes specific best practices and advice for getting the most out of video email, without the need for a large upfront production cost, or even a large marketing budget.
Seamless Video Email
Has Arrived
BEST PRACTICES FOR DRAMATICALLYINCREASING RESPONSE RATES & SUCCESS Thanks to the enabling prevalence of broadband and the immense popularity of YouTube and video in general, consumer interaction with the internet has changed dramatically over the last few years. According to comScore, some 139 million U.S. internet users now watch an average of 83 videos online each month. Consumers expect to see videos everywhere from news sites to Facebook pages to email. The promise of seamless video in email has already tantalized many CMOs as a means of engaging customers, driving greater response rates and higher revenue from email campaigns. But until now, truly seamless solutions available to a wide audience have been unavailable.
David Daniels, a veteran of Forrester Research and expert on email marketing trends, says video in email offers a 2-3X performance leap versus traditional email. It's a logical leap, as we intuitively grasp the power of visual communication over simple text. Video in email represents a signi?cant evolutionary advance of digital media, not unlike the leap that broadcast TV represented over broadcast radio. It is a game-changing step forward that will soon pull almost all companies in, and then separate them by how smartly they leverage their new advantage.
Just as there were those who used the new television medium as a mere extension of radio, there will also be some marketers who fail to grasp the new possibilities that video in email offers. And in so doing they will be placing their brands and companies at a disadvantage. For instance, TV favored photogenic personalities and as the 1960 Presidential debates proved, good looking politicians as well. Likewise, video in email will stimulate the aspirational side of marketing campaigns versus simply the actuarial side. Traditional text email may simply tout the low interest rate of a home loan, but a video email can showcase the dream of a nice neighborhood. An email targeting baseball fans could present raw data or, through the use of video, entice them with a shot of the previous night's winning home run. Video email represents a whole new game, requiring bigger thinking, a separate set of rules, and involving more sophisticated metrics for winning.
Traditional email return for every
$43 one dollar of email investment.
- Direct Marketing Association
Video email is the best of three worlds, bringing together the immediacy of the internet, the precise control and metrics of direct mail, along with the visual appeal of television and YouTube. At its best it has the potential to double or triple the overall ef?ciency of your marketing program, but employed in the wrong way and it can turn off existing customers. Video in email requires upfront planning and strategy, like any good campaign, but it doesn't necessitate either a large upfront production cost, or even a large marketing budget.
CREATE A CASE STUDY FOR EMAILDespite its popularity, email is still an under-allocated component of the marketing mix for many companies. The traditional ad agencies, which have signi?cant input in corporate marketing budgets, are still investing too many dollars in more expensive and less measurable (and less effective) broadcast and print advertising because this is what they know. According to research from Nielsen and the Direct Marketing Association, U.S. commercial email expenditures are just slightly in excess of $1 billion annually and represent only about 1% of 2009 U.S. advertising expenditures.
The mathematic case for greater deployment of video email in marketing campaigns is certainly compelling. The Direct Marketing Association has claimed that traditional email returns over $43 dollars for every one dollar of email investment, and as noted above, respected analysts are claiming video email can improve that ROI by a factor of 2-3x. And while these numbers may seem too good to be true, they can be readily tested and validated quickly within the con?nes of your business or brand, via simple A/B comparison testing, in a matter of days.Video email ups the ante and pressure on marketers to shift more of their budget away from traditional advertising because video email co- ops the unique visual bene?ts of TV and print advertis... [download for more]
